Clothing Makes the Woman

Anna Gregoline | September 2, 2004
I find I'm always looking at what strangers are wearing on the train. Do you think you can you tell something about a person from the way she or he dresses?

Erik Bates | September 2, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | September 2, 2004
Yes, we were all thinking that Erik.

It's kind of weird now that I work every day - sometimes I feel like I'm never in "street" clothes. It's either conservative casual for work, or p.j.s at home. It's getting a little better now - when I first started working, I had lots of suits and things and felt really uncomfortable with this situation - now I have more casual clothes that reflect my style a bit better and so I feel ok. But it's weird to not dress the way you would want to because of work, especially when you spend most of your time in those clothes.

Anthony Lewis | September 2, 2004
I look at a lot of women on the train...and since I work in the subway, I spend at least eight hours a day there, five days a week minimum. So I see a lot. I think I can read some women by the way they dress.

A lot of women have better self-esteem than what they let on, because they wear low-rise jeans and belly shirts...and have "rolls" hanging all out. Not saying that anything is wrong with this, but as a large guy I know that there are things that I personally would not wear. A lot of women don't seem to care. I think that's good to a point.

Another thing I notice is that a lot of women spend a lot of money to look like trash. What does that say about them? That they spend a lot of money to look like trash.

I could come up with more, but it'd take all day to type out. But a universal theme is how well a person takes care of the stuff they wear, because it's usually an indicator of how well they take care of themselves.

Anna Gregoline | September 2, 2004
One thing that always amazes me on the train is the large number of stupid shoes I see women wearing. Shoes that are painful, and bad-looking, and just generally strange. Oh, and expensive, I'm sure, for some of them. I don't really understand the female drive to buy shoes that hurt or make you walk like a freak.

Jackie Mason | September 2, 2004
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Lori Lancaster | September 2, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | September 2, 2004
Jackie, there was someone at my first job who dressed like that - skirts so short that my friend asked, "Is that sanitary?" and bizarre booby tops and boots and glitter, etc. All dressed for the club.

Melissa Erin | September 3, 2004
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Lori Lancaster | September 3, 2004
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Scott Hardie | September 3, 2004
Ugh. Pajama pants. Bad at WIU, an epidemic at Bradley. Wearing them around your dorm, to the cafeteria, is one thing. Wearing them to class? Wearing them to businesses around the campus? Wearing them around town? My mom was visiting for the weekend and I wanted to treat her to a classy Sunday brunch, and a party of several sophomore-aged couples came in wearing pajama bottoms & dirty sweatshirts and sat next to us, and this was on the other side of town from the university. Show some friggin' respect.

Anyway, I have a bit of a double-standard on the matter. I've been wearing the same outfit every day since high school: Black t-shirt, black slacks, black sneakers, no accessories or adornments. The outfit changed briefly to a full suit & tie every day when I was trying to sell insurance, but now I'm back to the same old. I just plain like it; it's who I am. I'm glad I don't need to dress any better except on special occasions. (Full disclosure: I enjoy wearing button-down shirts once in a while and looking good. The reason I don't do it more often is that my weight fluctuates, such that a shirt might fit just right or slightly loose one day, then the next day be stretched so that the buttons strain to hold it together in front. Wearing a t-shirt means putting on your outfit in the morning and forgetting about it.) I could write about the kind of disrespect this shows to the people I know and why I don't let that concern me for x y z reasons, but I have to stop here for reasons everybody knows.

Melissa Erin | September 3, 2004
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Scott Hardie | September 5, 2004
I don't know, it just strikes me as disrespectful, like men wearing nothing on top of their wife-beater undershirts. (I guess t-shirts represent the same trend, leaving aside their medieval origins.) I tried it too, wearing some sweatpants around town a couple of times before Matt pointed out how terrible they looked and how embarrassed he was to be seen with me. I haven't done so since. :-)